June 25 (Bloomberg) — The global economy would collapse if oil hit $200 a barrel, said the top energy analyst at Germany’s largest bank.

“Two-hundred dollar oil would break the back of the global economy,” Deutsche Bank AG’s Chief Energy Economist Adam Sieminski said in an interview today in Tokyo. “Next step after $200 would be global recession and bad news for everybody.”

Sieminski’s comments come after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast oil may rise to between $150 and $200 within two years as supply growth, especially from producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, fails to keep pace with demand. Deutsche Bank is due to release its oil-price forecast on June 27.

“All nations must be better at conservation, and the U.S. is at the top of that list,” said Bodman, who is attending a international meeting of oil producing and consuming nations focusing on high oil prices in Saudi Arabia Sunday.

While some have blamed speculators for driving up oil prices, Bodman said he did not believe they are the cause.

Since 2003, he said, global demand for oil has increased because of industry in China, India and the Middle East. But from 2005 to 2007, there was very little increase in supply. Read the rest of this entry »

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. Read the rest of this entry »

This is probably the most important book on the Weathermen written by one of its participants, tackling the many difficult inner complexities and questions that haunted the explosive project while remaining deeply committed to progressive social change and anti-racist organizing. In the end, this book taught me quite directly how and why the WUO went astray, and how a lack of open and participatory democracy can distort even the brightest of movements. Read the rest of this entry »

“Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement”

by Carl Oglesby

2008 by Scribner

Carl Oglesby, former top-security-clearance defense contractor stooge-turned SDS President, writes a personal view of SDS and the movement against the Vietnam War that is insightful, amusing, and cutting. However, Oglesby has a clear bias and it’s hard to know how much of his account (which is largely based on his memory of various heated conversations) is completely fair or accurate. Also, Oglesby’s account ends up being more depressing than inspiring, as he falls into some pessimism about the prospects for movement building in the US, largely based on his experience of SDS cannibalizing itself.

Worth reading though, mostly because it’s a quick and interesting read that cuts through a lot of bullshit about the romantic 60s, and attacks the reality of war and social change with simple and rough words like so many arrows. Read the rest of this entry »

“I would suggest that the likelihood of that happening sooner has increased tremendously … sometime in summer,” Jeffrey Currie told an oil and gas conference in the Malaysian capital, referring to oil at $150 a barrel.

Goldman Sachs, the most active investment bank in energy markets and one of the first to point to triple-digit oil more than two years ago — a once unthinkable level — said last month oil could shoot up to $200 within the next two years as part of a “super spike.”

Forecasts that oil could head towards $150 and above have multiplied over the past month as prices broke through several records, the latest being last Friday, when oil soared more than $11 a barrel on Friday, its biggest one-day gain ever.

Oil hit an all-time high of $139.12 on Friday on the back of a weak U.S. dollar and mounting tensions between Israel and Iran.

Goldman Sachs forecast almost a month ago that U.S. crude would average $141 a barrel in the second half of 2008, up from a previous projection of $107, due to tight supplies.

“Demand for oil is weak but supplies are even weaker,” Jeffrey Currie told the conference, citing supply disruptions in Nigeria and struggling output rise in Russia.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley, another big Wall Street energy player, said on Friday that crude may reach $150 by July 4 due to robust Asian demand and falling inventories.